​US transfers 6 Yemeni Guantanamo detainees to Oman

For the first time in six months, prisoners held without trial at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center have been flown out of Cuba. The Pentagon has announced that six Yemeni men have been transferred to Oman.

"The Department of Defense
announced today the transfer of Al Khadr Abdallah Muhammad Al
Yafi, Fadel Hussein Saleh Hentif, Abd Al-Rahman Abdullah Au
Shabati, and Mohammed Ahmed Salam from the detention facility at
Guantanamo Bay to Oman,"the US Department of Defense said in
a statement on Saturday.

They had been cleared to leave for years after first being taken
into custody in 2002. The departures now leave 116 detainees
imprisoned in Guantanamo.

No further large transfers are imminent, a senior US official
told Reuters, adding that efforts continue to repatriate
prisoners or settle them elsewhere.

President Obama’s pledge to shut down the facility has
continually been thwarted by the Republican-dominated Congress,
which outlawed bringing any detainees onto domestic soil. That
means if prisoners are to be released, they must be sent to their
home nation, or more usually, a third country.

Uruguay is one such recipient. The South American nation earlier
took in six detainees from Guantanamo, but a dispute between the
men and the Uruguayan authorities over the terms of the move led
to protests outside the US embassy in Montevideo.

A former Guantanamo
prisoner also died in Kazakhstan last month. He had been
resettled there after 11 years in Guantanamo. Pentagon did not
provide the cause of his death, but the British newspaper the Guardian
reportedthat it
was from kidney failure, citing another former
prisoner.

Guantanamo Bay was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by
Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. But it has been mired in
scandal throughout its history with allegations of torture and
sexual abuse.

This year, the current administration reiterated its intent to
empty the jail by 2017 - the end of Obama's presidency.